Yahoo Search Marketing Pay Per Click Advertising Forum

I just want to share some news with our U.S. Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers.

Within several weeks, minimum bids for a number of Sponsored Search keywords will no longer be fixed at $.10. Your new minimum bids can be lower or higher than $.10. Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at $.10.

The amount set as your minimum bid on a keyword in Sponsored Search can vary depending on multiple factors, such as the relevance of your keywords (as measured by the quality of the ads associated with them), and the number of bidders and bid amounts in the particular keyword market.

We’ve posted a more detailed article on the new features on our Yahoo! Search Marketing blog: [ysmblog.com...]

The "quality" aspect of this makes sense but as someone rightly commented on their blog, the idea of of not selling some space just because Yahoo thinks that space is worth more is a loss to Yahoo, the advertiser and potentially the searcher.

Exactly sem4u, I have absolutely no sympathy for their current financial troubles. It's their own fault. I know our agency would at least triple our spend with Yahoo if they provided what the advertiser has been asking for. Instead, the money is spent with Google who despite their own troubles listen to what advertisers want.

If this "feature" is even a good thing, it is simply a bottom of the list, easy and cheap to implement feature being disguised as a "step in the right direction" with a heading of "How can this benefit my account?" in the FAQ.

Yahoo, if you are going to copy everything Google does, why not copy their ability to listen to advertisers?

"With Yahoo improving and G declining, I wonder where this all is going..."

Yahoo improving? You must be kidding! They don't even realize yet that the internet is a GLOBAL thing. I own a very popular site with 850.000 UNIQUE United States visitors per month. I have to continue using Adsense because the Yahoo Publisher Network doesn't accept "foreign" publishers.

" They should allow advertising on Yahoo alone and not the hundreds of partner sites out there sending very poor quality traffic."

I agree with that sem4u.

Top things wrong with Yahoo search (in no particular order):

1. Minimum .10 per click. (Artificially inflating the price of a click - or anything for that matter - is a bad idea. Let the market decide. Looks like they might be addressing this... however, I wouldn't be surprised if this is a backdoor way of raising the minimum on most keywords. Time will tell. I'm cautiously optimistic.)

2. Let us opt out of the "partner sites". (We've been begging for this for almost 3 years. The partnership with Gator Scumware/Adware was the last straw for us. When we got a few calls from customers complaining that we were showing up in unwanted Gator pop-ups on their computer, we knew it was time to pull out).

3. Interface is hard to navigate and can be cumbersome and confusing still. (How about a desktop application for heavy users?)

It will be great if Yahoo is actually listening and really will make changes. These requests have been brought up ad naseum all over the web.

We have thousands of keywords that we use on Google (at .05 but don't on Yahoo because we can't justify it at .10 with lower quality traffic).

1.) Copy Google's Query --> Keyword matching rules. For far too many queries, YSM displays no ads leaving those who can monetize Google's Broad Match with far less traffic than desired. According to many studies, almost 30% of searches occur on Yahoo (& YSM network sites?) but - polling those I know in this business - Yahoo takes far less than 30% of our spend. Increase the exposure & offer the tools to pay the appropriate amounts for it.

2.) Improve network quality. Losing MSN severely hurt YSM's click quality. They must replenish this value through quality partnerships AND eliminating junk sites from the network. With Google's crack-down on quality, YSM has become a safe haven for such sites. Build and maintain quality, and increases in Advertiser spend will be long-term increases.

3.) Address UI Issues. IMHO, significant barriers to growing or optimizing campaigns exist in the Panama UI. These must be improved. Based on how long it took to build, some of the omissions are really pretty unacceptable. The nice thing is - the answers are all there for the taking! Visit Google's UI - it does all that you do, but better.

4.) Listen to your Advertisers. I know there are some YSM reps who patrol this message board, but not nearly often enough. The Adwords Advisor lives on the Google boards - participating in and provoking excellent discussion. Oftentimes, discussions that are initially critical of Google, but with valid arguments and suggestions that are noted and addressed. Yahoo needs to make sure somebody does the same. Advertisers are talking, start listening!

I guess the summary would be this rule of thumb: If you're going to copy Google mostly, you might as well copy Google entirely.

Thanks everybody for the great feedback, which I’m sharing with the team.

Thanks for coming here and posting, YahooPete. I do appreciate you coming here and giving us updates about what YSM is doing. Please DO pass our feedback on. I used to spend money with YSM, but at the moment I just cannot justify it...

1. Minimum .10 per click. (Artificially inflating the price of a click - or anything for that matter - is a bad idea. Let the market decide. Looks like they might be addressing this... however, I wouldn't be surprised if this is a backdoor way of raising the minimum on most keywords. Time will tell. I'm cautiously optimistic.)

A while back I talked to one of the account reps, and he basically said that one main reason was that there was a huge number of keywords that were being "under" used, because they "were not worth" 10 cents. From what I gathered, if they can get 10 million people to use 5 more 5 cent keywords each, even at 5 cents it adds up. And I would guess their hope is that if competition for keywords goes up, eventually the price will rise.